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Balm for Bad Newspaper News
“Watch some old episodes of Lou Grant, the late-seventies TV series about life at a newspaper. . . . The show, which stars Ed Asner as an irascible city editor. . . , is a time capsule of an era when circulation was up and anxieties about the industry’s future were down. In Lou Grant’s newsroom, the phones are always ringing, the typewriters clacking, the reporters free to spend days or weeks working on a story, without fretting over ballooning expenses or the next round of layoffs. The Internet, of course, is a nonfactor; the most advanced technology is a Telex machine. In short, Lou Grant revels in the old-fashioned milieu of shoe leather and black ink.”
—Steven Kurutz, writer, Columbia Journalism Review, Jan/Feb 2009
Editorial comment: Fine, but I can't see Lou Grant “reveling” anywhere, let alone in a “milieu.”
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Oh, but this misses the point. The real treat was not Lou Grant, but Mary Tyler Moore who was a producer for the 6 O'clock News (after Grant was "promoted" to the teevee). I think I majored in journalism because of Mary Tyler Moore. She was smart, sassy, looked great in a miniskirt, and didn't let the boys push her around.
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